1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to storage subsystems in general, and more particularly, to storage systems having multiple storage devices. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method for automatically configuring newly added components to a storage subsystem.
2. Description of Related Art
A storage subsystem is commonly provided to a data processing system for storing data to be utilized by the data processing system. For most storage subsystems, the storage capacity often needs to be expanded over a period of time. However, the process of storage capacity expansion typically requires extensive user interactions.
For example, during the addition of new disk drives in a storage system, a user must configure the new disk drives by first creating a storage pool that defines the redundant array independent disk (RAID) type. After a storage pool has been established, a storage volume can then be created, which determines the storage capacity that a host computer can access. The newly created storage volume can be mapped to the host computer as an expansion to an existing storage pool or as an addition to a host computer. All of the above-mentioned steps are required to be performed manually by the user.
Consequently, it would be desirable to provide an improved method for configuring newly added storage devices to a storage subsystem that requires minimal user interactions.